


Wandered Aimless Til The Sun Came Up

by The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette



Series: Far Away [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: ABO, Alpha Arthur, Alpha Charles, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Beta Abigail, Beta John, Beta/Beta, Building up for a true sequel, Explanation, F/M, Mention of Heat, Omega Reader, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Sorry Not Sorry, explainin some shit to Hosea, explaining more of Arthur's thoughts, i name the Reader because I'm not doing a chaptered story in second person, mention of rut, time for some vocabulary, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26351686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette/pseuds/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette
Summary: Arthur's finally made it back to camp after leaving reader at the ending of Aching Chest, Blurry Sight.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Reader
Series: Far Away [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914832
Comments: 12
Kudos: 89





	Wandered Aimless Til The Sun Came Up

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, so, this is suppose to world build a little and flesh out my take on Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics and all that shit, but please remember if its a little confusing its because Arthur wouldn't just spell it out completely to someone else, and if you were a wolf you would just know this.  
> That being said, if you have questions, comment them and I'll try to hop on here and actually try to answer them. 
> 
> title is from the song Coyote Caller by Joshua James.
> 
> *ALSO CAN SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE*  
> if anyone on here plays the game, can you please, pretty please, go to the meteor crash sight (the big one) in the northeast corner of the map, stand on the road north of it, and point your horse like your going up the road towards Amberino. now, if the crash site is on your left, you got it, but turn the camera so you're looking over your right shoulder and start down the road. you'll see a little area with trees and a couple of rocks off to the side over your shoulder pretty soon, and a big flat ledge that kinda looks like the one where the "feller that's too big" talks to you. I'm pretty sure theres a cave up on it, but I can't get up there. I've crashed my horse into it, crashed buggies and wagons, tried throwing Arthur up there with dynamite, everything. Please, for the love of god, someone get up there and please tell me what's in that stupid cave!

Arthur made it back to camp with the second setting sun after leaving the makeshift den in the woods north of Strawberry, clothes and skin scrubbed raw and still shivering from the icy water of the Dakota River, wet clothes bundled and strapped to the back of his horse.

He paused almost without realizing it, head canting, breathing in deep as he sorted out the smells and slight sounds from the camp up ahead. Smoke, cooking meat, low laughter and the sharp twang of a banjo being plucked. If he really concentrated, he could even hear the crackle of fires being stoked and prodded back to life for evening festivities.

Slowly he came back, aware enough to realize that the sounds of camp had faded as his senses turned backwards, searching behind him. Listening for a distant clip clop of hooves or the soft pad of feet that weren’t there.

He snorted at his own foolishness, hand coming up to absently rub at the ache behind his eyes, fingers then turning to his jaw to rub at the ache in his molars and canines. He finished the movement with a hard smack to the side of his neck, letting his hand rest there for a moment before dropping it back to the reins, tongue clicking and heels nudging to send his mare forward again.

His tongue ran over the inside of his mouth once more before he broke through the shadows of trees, checking for any last hint of cinnamon and reminding himself that he was imagining the phantom hum in his gums. He only had the moment, then camp was laid out in front of him, and he almost couldn’t control the grimace at the sight waiting for him at the hitching post.

Hosea had perfected looking disinterested sometime before Arthur’s twentieth birthday, and had used his skills in all matter of situations, from outsmarting the law to getting off scot free when his late wife took issue with his behavior. However, it had never fooled Arthur very well, a fact they both knew but each were too stubborn to give up the game.

Arthur stopped a few feet away, swung down from the saddle and ended up hovering with one foot in the stirrup, one leg refusing to bend for a long second. He gritted his teeth against the ache that traveled up his back and forced his body to complete the movement, breathing deeply as the ripple wound its way back through his muscles before settling.

His mare rolled one liquid eye back at him, neck turning to mouth gently at his coat arm. He gave her a soft, fond pat on the rump before loosing the cinch on her saddle, ears trained on Hosea even as he pretended to ignore him.

The older man waited seemingly patiently until Arthur finished with his horse, letting him turn the mare loose into the rest of the herd before taking the pipe out of his mouth and heaving a sigh.

“So.”

“So…” Arthur mimicked him, crossing the last yard to dump his saddle over the post, sighing internally as he let his arms hang across the worn leather and the creaking wood took his leaning weight.

Hosea didn’t turn, sticking the pipe back in the corner of his mouth. Arthur’s nose twitched at the slightly acidic smell curling from the bowl, and he leaned down to rub his face against the rough wool of his coat.

“You look like you need to run.”

Arthur snorted again, finally turned to his surrogate father. “Runnins the last thing I need, Hosea.”

Hosea hummed, lips pursing around the pipe, and then he took it out again, head tilting so he could meet Arthur’s eyes out of the corner of his own, before blinking in shock. “You’re soaked.”

Arthur hummed, considering. “Dumped myself twice in the river, tryin to knock some sense back into my thick head.”

Hosea watched for a long moment, and Arthur watched as the gears turned, watched as the man pondered and discarded each thought that rolled across. Finally, “John and Javier came back four nights ago…” He trailed off, but Arthur heard the question plain enough.

“They wouldn’t get like this, Hosea.”

“I understand Javier’s a little different, but John-”

“Javier’s a lot different,” Arthur said it softly, but his eyes flicked to the slender man across camp, and winced as his head slowly turned in confusion. Arthur subtly waved him off, and the coyote canted his head, before slowly nodding. “And John, well,” he let his eyes find John slumped at the table they normally played poker at, watched with a grin as one eye flickered open, “John’s an idiot.” Bared teeth, barely playful, but John only huffed and closed his eye again.

Hosea was still watching him. he shifted slightly, favoring his right leg, and let his elbow lean against the post with Arthur. “Are you alright?”

Arthur met his eyes for a moment before turning back to camp, sighing through his nose. “I will be, in a little bit. Might have a shorter temper for a bit.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it you lunkhead.” He smiled slightly at the exasperated tone leveled at the top of his head. “None of the others would tell me what was happenin.”

“They wouldn’t,” his eyes moved to Charles, sitting with Javier. By now the others had caught his scent, hopefully neutral after a thorough scrubbing and two dunkings in icy water. He watched as Abigail rounded Pearon’s tent with an empty wash bin in tow, headed their way presumingly to get his dirty clothes out of camp as soon as possible.

Hosea was still waiting, he realized, mouth set in a stubborn line. With another sigh and a groan at aching joints he straightened, thoughts running a mile a minute at what he could say.

He was interrupted by Abigail’s choking curse as she got nearer, and a faint thrill of alarm shot through him as her face shuttered, one hand coming up to block her nostrils at his scent.

He braced his hands against the post again and sighed, this time loudly. “I scrubbed myself raw in the river,” he called to her without raising his head.

“I’m sure you did, you asshole.” at least her tone was still friendly through the bite. “Throw your fucking clothes over here so I can at least get the stench off of them.”

He did as asked, chose to ignore the way John suddenly sat up straight as he took two steps towards Abigail to toss the sodden lump into the pail, and turned back to Hosea in resignation of more questions as the younger Beta stooped to tug the pail away.

The older man was staring over his shoulder however, watching the way John tracked Abigail back around Pearson’s wagon before he started, scrubbing at his face and pushing away from the table to follow. Within moments, Arthur winced at the whispered argument coming from the other side of the wagon.

Hosea turned back to him as he stepped closer, a thought settled on his brow like a flashing bulb. “Is this… like-”

“No,” Arthur bit it off quickly, “it ain’t like John and Abigail.” When Hosea still looked like he was thinking too hard, Arthur touched his elbow and gestured to the forest.

They went only far enough for Arthur to make sure none of the other wolves could hear, though they probably all knew what was happening.

“Hosea, I…” Arthur trailed off, took off his riding gloves and slapped them against his leg as he thought for words, conscious of Hosea watching him. He blew breath roughly from his lips, leaned one shoulder roughly against a tree, and tried again. “I’m… an Alpha, yeah?” He waited for Hosea to nod in understanding.

“Like Charles,” he supplied, and Arthur nodded.

“Yea, and John 'n Abigail are Betas.”

Hosea’s brow furrowed, obviously expecting something more. “And?”

“There’s another,” Arthur watched his face, feeling all of his muscles lock up as his thoughts turned to the last couple of days. “Omega.”

Hosea took a step closer, watching him closely. “You’re eyes changed.”

Arthur started, scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yea, that’s part of it.” He dropped his hand and closed his eyes, tilted his head back to bare his throat to the older man before continuing. “Its… god, Hosea. It’s like a drug.” He opened his eyes and gave him a rueful grin, taking a slight pleasure in shocking his father.

“A drug?”

“It ain’t normally a problem, if you ran with a pack that had one, or if your territory overlapped and you got a whiff every now and then, but…”

“Speak plainly, son.” His heart stuttered at the moniker, and feeling emboldened, he stepped closer, thankful that Hosea didn’t back up even though he knew his eyes were silver.

“I struck Rut, Hosea.”

“Rut.” the word was bitten short, stark, Hosea’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Like… a deer?”

Arthur snorted at the comparison, and chuckled lowly. “Hell, I guess. The scent gets to your head and all you can think about is fuckin or fightin, and at the time they both end up being the same thing.” He saw the next question and nodded.

“Yea, same thing could happen to Charles, or to us both if the timin was bad.”

Alarm crossed his features, and Arthur went still. “is it safe, then, are they still around?”

“They’re gone,” he retreated against the tree again as the old man seemed to settle. “it ain’t necessarily a bad thing, Hosea.”

“You and Charles ripping each other apart in the middle of camp sounds pretty bad.”

“Oh, It wouldn’t get like that, Hosea.” at his look, he grimaced and continued. “Charles and I know each other’s scent, we wouldn’t fight over a female.” _We’d just fuck her together._

He didn’t say the last part, it almost came out, but he bit his tongue at the last possible moment. Already internally berating himself at the lapse of thought, his pumping blood turning his thoughts into the quicksilver as they raced through his head, and he missed Hosea’s next question.

Hosea was quiet, and when Arthur turned his attention back to him he was met with a suspicious glint in his eyes. Arthur shuffled a tad guiltily against the roughened bark at his back, suddenly certain Hosea had guessed the internal remark to himself.

“I asked,” Hosea remarked, lip twitching as his suspicion turned to humor, “do you _strike_ Rut every time an Omega is around?”

“Naw,” Arthur shook his head decisively. “The first times the worst, when you haven’t been around one for a while, then it only pops up when they’re fertile.”

“Fertile,” oh, Hosea was definitely stifling some amusement, his tone taking any inflection out of the one word.

Arthur rolled his eyes, “if you could see the marks we left on each other, you’d not be nearly as amused, old man.”

“You hurt her?” Arthur probably should be happy it sounded like Hosea didn’t believe it, but the words still caused him to grit his teeth.

“Like I said, in Rut, fuckin and fightin is the same thing, and a female’s Heat ain’t much better.” He dug in his satchel, struck a cigarette to have something to do with his hands. “But she gave as good as she got, don’t worry.”

A beat as Hosea thought about that, then yet another question. “This ever happen to you before?”

“Once or twice,” He took a deep drag on the cigarette, holding the burn deep in his lungs before exhaling it into the night. His skin suddenly felt too tight and itchy, and he knew the moon was starting to rise.He realized he probably shouldn’t be telling Hosea all this, no matter how much the man loved him. There were certain things that just seemed better left unsaid. But the wildness that had been drug up from under his skin needed an outlet, needed to justify. “When I was younger, stupider, I’d go lookin for Omegas.”

Hosea started, a faraway look crossing his face for half a second. “That time we were in Catoosa Springs?”

Arthur nodded, “yea, that was the last time. _That_ ,” he emphasized, “is what happens when you fight an Alpha over an Omega.” The scar burned hot for a lucid moment, a stark reminder that branded him across his stomach and hip. He didn’t need to tell Hosea he’d lost that fight.

Hosea was quiet for a minute, and Arthur flickered his gaze over to see him slowly looking Arthur up and down. Eventually, though, “Why didn’t you bring her back?”

“Wouldn’t be right,” he tired to leave it at that, but Hosea persisted, and Arthur felt a flash of irritation at his next words.

“Granted, John and Abigail have their differences, but since they’ve mated, as you call it, they…”

Arthur winced, feeling a headache coming on, “I told you, it ain’t like Abigail and John, Hosea.” He gestured a sweep with his hand, trying to make the other man understand. “I didn’t mate her, didn’t Offer.”

Hosea stepped closer, “but you slept with her.”

Arthur snarled, a flash of red running up the back of his neck and across his vision, “I fucked her brains out for a solid five hours straight and then her Heat broke.”

Hosea stayed where he was, and Arthur almost drowned in the wave of displeasure and anger that swamped him from the older man. The man who raised him, saved him, taught him everything he knew.

His head thunked backwards, voice soft and rough as he croaked, “sorry.”

Hosea shrugged, and the anger lessened. “My boy, I’ve raised you since before you could say more than a handful of words. There’s a lot more you’d have to do if you really wanted to scare me.”

Arthur let his eyes slide to the side, watched as the smoke from the cigarette held loose in his hand curled upwards. “Omegas… they’re wild, Hosea.” He gestured outwards, trying to encompass the whole valley and mountains beyond with the sweep of his hand.“They’re made for the wild. I can dress up, walk and act like a man, do a pretty damn good job of hidin what I am. But an Omega?” He stopped, shook his head, glanced up to meet the older man’s look.

“You wanted to offer, though.” He started visibly at the declaration, a stake through the heart as he realized Hosea had ferreted out his intent. “You wanted to mate her.”

He licked his lips, dropped his hand. “Yes. I wanted to Offer.”

Hosea crossed his arms, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back towards camp. “Which means I was right, and this is like John and Abigail.”

Arthur blinked at the neat way Hosea was back to his point, finally shaking his head and flicking the cigarette down, taking a moment to ground it beneath his heel before answering:

“I ain’t exactly a great catch, Hosea, even to a wolf. There’s…. traditions, and a whole heap of expectations to it. Offering is a big thing, I know you’ve got some idea, watching John and Abigail, but even they’re a special case.”

He could _fucking_ smell the intent behind Hosea’s questions, as easy as if the man had come right out and said it. He was getting old, and in his worry over the future was trying to make sure his family was on the right path. Arthur loved Hosea, a love that was doubled down on because of the easy acceptance and protection given to him while he was young and still finding his way.

But he wasn’t young anymore, and he had found his way. And time had already proven it didn’t include a blood family.

He continued when the other man stayed quiet, something inside him urging him to try and put Hosea’s mind at ease after subjecting him to a bout of dramatics. “I did the most I could do, the most I felt she would accept.”

“Which was?”

“Told her to come find me if there’s pups,” the moment he said it, he knew he did wrong, and had to react quickly to grab Hosea’s arm as the older man stumbled in shock.

“Pups?!” He fair shouted it, and Arthur winced as the word seemed to echo around them into the still night of the forest.

_Now you’ve done it._ Arthur righted the man, dusted imaginary flecks from his shirt and vest, and finally met his stunned look with a weak smile.

“Surprise, Grandpa.”

Hosea swelled up like a toad, and Arthur watched, taking no small amount of glee from the way his eyes bulged for a moment before he wheeled about, hands already slapping at his coat pockets for his pipe as he walked briskly further into the forest.

“Don’t get lost, now.” Arthur called after him, and grinned at the obscene gesture tossed back.

Later, when the rippling down his back finally subsided, he went back to camp, intent on finding a bottle of whiskey and drinking it in one go. It was easy enough to find, even easier to hone in on the scent of Charles and John around the fire. He blamed the oncoming headache for not scenting Javier until he had plopped down next to the coyote on the log.

“Shit, Javier, sorry-”

He got no further before a violent sneeze rang out, the man’s smaller frame practically curling inwards in his haste to put the whole log between them. Another sneeze, and he was on his feet, waving haphazardly over his shoulder at Arthur as he quickly crossed camp.

The other men sat frozen, listening to the receding sneezes, then John broke the trance with a wry chuckle.

“Can’t blame em,” his broken voice rasped over the edge of his own dark glass bottle, “you do smell a trifle dangerous right now, Arthur.”

“Shut up, John,” it was snarled back, a little more anger behind it than was warranted, but John simply took it in stride, not bothering to rise to the bait hidden in Arthur’s eyes.

Charles huffed at them both, a gentle reminder of where they were, and then leaned back against his own log, leaving the fire between him and Arthur. “How’d it go with Hosea?”

Arthur opened his mouth to reply, only to snap it shut again as John chose to answer.

“Oh, we all heard how it went. Really, Arthur, telling him _pups_ might be comin?”

Arthur turned his glare onto the younger man, felt the wolf rise up in his eyes, and cursed, quickly bringing the bottle up to block the shine coming off of them. “I swear to god, Marston, I will drag you back up that mountain and give you back to those wolves you pissed off.”

John only snorted, and left Charles to once again try and broker peace between the two. “Might be good, have some young ones running around camp.”

“It wouldn’t be good, and you know it,” but he didn’t bite it out at Charles the same way he did at John. If anything, he could taste the defeat in his voice.

Hosea was right, he had wanted to Offer to the Omega. Hell, it had taken everything in him not to. He was thirty six years old though, damn it, and an outlaw to boot. No territory, running with a camp of humans, no guarantee of safety and no way of providing security. Loyal to someone other than a pack.

John stayed silent for once, and Arthur looked over askance at him, expecting the usual remark that toed the line between playful and passive aggression. However, the man was watching the fire, and it wasn’t until he looked up that Arthur realized he was actually thinking.

“If she does… come find you. Will you Offer?”

Arthur breathed out harshly, ripped his gaze away from John’s too earnest gaze in favor of staring at the bottom of the fire, counting the glowing coals until the question could fade into the rising smoke.

Charles shifted, and Arthur’s gaze flickered to him, feeling the turmoil that brewed and bubbled under his ribs soothe at the calmness the other Alpha oozed into his surroundings.

“What was her name?”

Arthur closed his eyes, lowered his brow to rest it against the lip of his whiskey bottle, fighting the sudden urge to get up and leave. Leave, before he could tell them her name, leave, before they could scent the _want_ on him. Damn them. Damn him.

“Dovetail,” he rasped, letting the word fall from his lips, knowing the way he said it, the way he couldn’t help but say it.

Silence met him, and he kept his head stubbornly down. Another beat, an almost silent whisper of cloth, and then a body dropped beside him in the dirt, followed by another on his other side.

He raised his head a fraction, caught in disbelief as John pressed his arm against his leg, the man closer than he’d willingly been in _years_ , and almost missed the brush of thigh against the outside of his own as Charles reclined again on his other side.

“Tomorrow,” Charles began slowly, as though consciously making the effort not to break the silence, “we’ll go hunting.” He turned his dark, solemn eyes to Arthur, “as a pack.”

John broke the silence without missing a beat, “Oh, Abigail will love that, she’s been bitchin to get out of camp.”

Arthur felt the familiar anger directed at the younger Beta bubble up, stutter in the back of his throat, but before the growl could fight its way past his teeth Charles broke the tension with a full bodied laugh, throwing his head back and jostling Arthur into John with a shaking shoulder.


End file.
